interslavic community

8. adjectives

Interslavicadjectivesare formedby addingendings(and sometimes also prefixes) to other words. They are inflected and have three genders in singular (plural is only one for all genders). Words are palatalized during adding these endings (e.g. k→č, h→š, g→ž). Adjectives ending at č,š,ž,j have soft pattern (e.g. svěži, svěžego), otherwise have hard pattern (e.g. dobry, dobrogo).

The most usedendings (in the order m. f. n. pl.) are:

-sky, -ska, -sko, -ski. This is the most used ending aimed for general use.

example: Rus, russky = Russian (noun), Russian (adj.)

-ji, -ja, -je, -ji. This expresses some origin, in the way of meaning "ot + genitive" = "from somebody/something".

Of course, these endings can be combined as for example: petrovska orchestra (-ov + -ska) etc.

declension

Contemporary Slavic languages use two patterns for the inflection of adjectives: soft and hard. Both these patterns evolved from the Old Slavonic system of definite inflection adjectives: adjective + pronoun on, ona, ono (in its archaic form i, ja, je):

In Interslavic, we need to find a consensus across all Slavic languages. The solution is yet more complicated, that there evolved complicated and mutually different orthography traditions in writing vowels i/y after consonants k and g during centuries of evolution. For example in Russian is k regarded as a hard consonant (e.g. -kogo), but the Russian orthography tradition does not allow to write y after it.

Fortunately, the difference between adjective inflection patterns are only in their different vowels (e.g. Russian hard pattern -ogo and soft -ego, Polish hard pattern -ego and soft -iego, Czech hard pattern -ého and soft -ího and so on ...). This means that the Neoslavonic simplified solution is understandable to everyone.

The problem of i/y in different orthography traditions is ignored in Neoslavonic edition of Interslavic. The writing of i/y is not related to any consonant but has only the morphological role (e.g. dobr-y is nominative singular, dobr-i is nominative plural).

gradationAdjectiveshave the same system of gradation as inEnglishin threestages: indicative, comparative and superlative. Moreover in addition,there is the augmentative as the possibility to amplify the property in indicative.

indicative
This is the standard form of an adjective.

examples: zeleny = green;gluboky = deep;dragy = dear;svěži = fresh.

comparative
This the higher level of property made by endings -ějši, -ějša, -ějše, -ějši or-ejši, -ejša, -ejše, -ejši after palatalized consonants č, š, ž. When comparing, the genitive case and the prepositionot = from is used.

superlative
This the absolute level of property made by prefix naj- added to the comparative form. When comparing, the genitive case and the prepositioniz = from is used.

example:
najdražejši iz vsih ljudij = the most dear/valuable from all people.

augmentative
This is the augmented form of the indicative made by prefix naj- added to the indicative form. It is usedfor example ina respectfulsalutation.

example:
najdragy gospodi! = (very) dear Sir!

descriptive gradation

Likein Englishwe canalso usedescriptive gradation.Unlike English, however,the basic form of gradation is applicable to allkinds of adjectives.Thisdescriptive gradation is made by adding adverbsvyše, najvyše (higher, the highest) or bolje, najbolje (bigger, the biggest).Bothhaveexactly the samemeaning as "more, the most" in English. The augmentative can be expressed using the adverb mnogo (much, many, a lot of, plenty of).

example:

dragy

dražejši = vyše dragy = bolje dragy

najdražejši = najvyše dragy = najbolje dragy

najdragy = mnogo dragy

irregular gradation

Although Neoslavonic is an artificiallanguage, itcan not exist withoutirregularadjectives.They arepresent in allSlaviclanguages.The Neoslavonic has onlyfive of them: